30 April 2009 3:06 PM

On being a gun nut

Well, I said I would be misrepresented when I voiced doubts about 'gun control', and I duly was, by a contributor who seems keen to legalise a drug that destroys the brains of the young, but regards it as unthinkable to allow individuals to own guns. He says I am a 'gun nut'. Does that make him a 'dope nut'? Perhaps, though I doubt he will see it that way. Well, I don't see it his way either. Here's why.

Presumably he imagines that my house is crammed with firearms and ammunition, and that I salivate over gun porn in my bullet-proof bunker. I'm sorry to disappoint him but I neither own any guns nor wish to do so. I find proper firearms as alarming as I find powerful motorcycles. In both cases you need to know what you're doing before you use them. In both cases they give you more power than you might want to possess. In both cases, they are too easily capable of inflicting pain and injury. Having nearly killed myself (and someone else) on a motorbike when I was 17, I would be reluctant to ride one again. I can, without any effort at all, recall in vivid detail the screaming of metal on Tarmac as my machine tipped over, sparks flying, and the first sight of my very badly broken ankle after I had hopped to the roadside. I can also remember that, after a dreamlike interlude when I was unaware of how badly I was hurt, it was very painful but (fortunately) have no actual memory of the pain itself, which was just short of the level needed to pass out. I hope this helps to explain why I am also not anxious to keep a firearm.

I don't even like being near motorbikes any more. I am more aware than most people of what severe physical injury looks and feels like. And I suspect I should be just as cautious with a loaded gun of any kind. Handling unloaded ones, as I did for some posed pictures in Moscow, Idaho last October, is of course another matter.

The only firearms I ever possessed were a couple of childhood airguns, once common but now - I suspect - more or less banned. The righteous frenzy against toy guns (including those which are unmistakably and obviously toys) is now so great that toyshops often don't stock them any more. All I desire is my lawful freedom, as guaranteed by the 1689 Bill of Rights and lawlessly whittled away by the civil service and dim politicians, to own a gun if I choose to do so. I suppose it's possible that, as our anarchy deepens, I might reluctantly want to take advantage of this. But that's the point. The choice should be mine, not that of some boot-faced politically-correct police officer anxious to maintain his monopoly of force - and anxious to ensure that his idea of the law should be the only one available.

As I argue in my book 'A Brief History of Crime', it's the great gulf between police and public over how the law should be enforced that lies behind two important features of modern Britain. The frequent arrests of people for defending themselves or their property are not accidents or quirks. They are the consequence of the Criminal Justice system's abandonment of old-fashioned ideas of punishment; also of that system's social democratic belief that crime has 'social' causes and the ownership of property isn't absolute. Most law-abiding people don't really accept this. They think criminals do bad things because they lack conscience or restraint, not because they were abused as children or their dole payments are too small. And they don't see why they have to barricade their houses or hide their worldly goods from view on the assumption that some unrestrained low-life is otherwise bound to steal them. So they regard it as legitimate to hurt and punish those who rob them or otherwise attack them. If they were allowed to enforce the law as they see it, they would quickly show the police and courts up as useless and mistaken. One of the most important jobs of the police is to stop us looking after ourselves, in case we do a better job than PC Plod.

Guns simply take this to a higher level. Since we foolishly abolished the formal death penalty, imposed after a careful trial, we have transferred the power of capital punishment to an increasingly armed police force (though no legislation has ever actually been passed to arm them, and the pretence is still maintained that they are unarmed). That police force is now the arm of the liberal state - rather than enforcers of conservative law (which is why it is nowadays called a 'service') - and so has a much wider licence to use (liberal) violence than ordinary conservative citizens. Contrast the police force's zealous efforts to stamp out private gun ownership with its own rather poor efforts at responsible gun use, as a result of which quite a few people (one stark naked in a well-lit room) have been shot by mistake or as a result of over-reaction by armed officers. As it happens, I find these mistakes and over-reactions quite easy to pardon. Which of us, in such situations, could be sure he would do the right thing? I've never joined in the frenzy of criticism over the de Menezes case, for instance. It is terribly easy to see how such an error could have been made under the circumstances. But if we didn't have an armed police force, and left executions to the hangman, then these things would be a lot less likely.

But what concerns me is that members of the public in the same situation are judged so much more harshly if they make such mistakes. And, perhaps more important, how police shootings are widely accepted, though they are summary, often erroneous and inadequately investigated. Whereas a society which finds this summary execution acceptable gets into a pseudo-moral lather about the idea of lawful execution after due process, jury trial, the possibility of appeal and reprieve.

This brings me back to the USA. Americans are not so infantilised as we are. For many reasons, mainly the fact that it is still possible to live genuinely rural lives in large parts of the country, Americans are less likely to rely on others to protect them or their homes from danger.

This used to be true of us too (again I must urge those who are interested to read the relevant chapter in 'Brief History'). It's evident from a lot of English fiction, written not for propaganda but by people who simply recorded life as they understood it, that until quite recently we had a more American view of things. In fact until 1920 English Gun Law made Texas look effeminate. Read, as nobody now does, Captain Marryat's 'Children of the New Forest' set in the days of Cromwell, and observe the wholly different attitudes towards self-defence against crime that are casually described there.

Read, as fewer and fewer people now do, alas, the 'Sherlock Holmes' stories, and see how often Holmes and Dr Watson venture out carrying firearms. This was perfectly legal, and unsurprising, in the late Victorian and Edwardian era in which the stories are set. And pre-1914 attempts to control guns were resisted by MPs much as the US Congress resists them now.

My suspicion is that the guts were knocked out of us British by the First World War, in which the best people of all classes died by their thousands in the great volunteer armies which marched off to Loos, Passchendaele and the Somme. Those who survived lacked something of the spirit that a free country needs, and we never fully recovered, just as Russia has yet to recover from the fourfold blow of the First World War, Civil War, Great Purge and Second World War, each of which destroyed the best and brightest of their generations. The USA - a society, for the most part, of volunteers and pioneers, has never had a comparable experience. Let us hope it never does.

May I endorse the kind things said about Canada by some correspondents? British people are often given to making lofty and scornful remarks about various countries which they decry as 'boring' - Canada, Belgium and Switzerland usually being the chief victims. Canada is anything but boring. On the contrary it is a fascinating and intensely civilised society, made all the more so by the survival of a French-speaking province (and I admit to having been too diffident about the monarchism of the Quebecois, who were sensibly allowed by Protestant Hanoverian Britain to maintain their Roman Catholic faith without restriction - though I was sorry, on my last visit to Quebec City, to find the handsome Anglican Cathedral there closed and locked. Still, I was pleased to see that - like the Anglican church in Sark - it offered services in French as well as English. How I wish the 1662 Prayer Book could be translated, and I mean properly translated, with all the poetry, into every major language of the world).

Belgophobes also need to travel a bit more. Among the many delights of that country are a comprehensive railway system that puts ours to shame, several treasure houses of some of the best paintings in the world and a rather better record in resisting German invasion than they are generally given credit for. As for Switzerland, the determination of its people to remain free is very far from boring, and continues to this day.

One contributor asks why I don't go to live in the USA, since I like it so much. Why should I? This is my country, where my ancestors are buried and where I hope and intend to be buried myself, where I grew up, whose landscape, climate, music, poetry and architecture are in my bones, whose battle-honours are my battle-honours and whose history is my history. Nowhere else is like it. It is precisely because I know and like so many other countries that I know and love my own best of all. Given the way things are going, I don't completely rule out the possibility of becoming an exile, but that will not be because I want to be. It never is.

Oh, and by the way, those who object to being called 'dimwitted' by me have a simple remedy. Don't say dimwitted things, and especially spare me any repetitions of the 'what about alcohol and tobacco, then, eh?' attempted defence of cannabis. If I urged the unrestricted sale of alcohol and tobacco, they might just have a small point. Since I support legal restrictions on both (both for reasons repeatedly given on this site - I do not believe that legally banning their possession would work, whereas it would with cannabis), they have no point at all. This argument annoys me especially because it is so dishonest, given that those who use it have no actual interest in curbing the use of any poison, merely in preventing serious action against the poison they favour. It also annoys me because its proponents did not even think of it themselves, but bought it retail, ready made in easy-to-swallow capsules.

I suspect (because it is so common) that this non-argument is being widely taught it in school in 'PSHE' indoctrination sessions, and that those who advance it have never thought about it all, because it suited their own interests to swallow it whole. I think it is good for such people to realise that others regard them as dimwitted - for parroting weak and wicked arguments foisted on them by irresponsible teachers. They and these teachers ought to be forced to do weekend shifts in the cannabis wards in our mental hospitals. Meanwhile, the jibe that they are 'dimwitted', a mild one under the circumstances, might make them think about the subject, perhaps for the first time in their sheltered lives.

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Brits can't defend themselves during an attack? What a sad joke of a country. I also saw that toothpick ban because they pose a "health risk". Sad, sad, worthless country. No wonder the world doesn't bother to take you seriously anymore.

Is the Bill of Rights section pertaining to the right of gun ownership (albeit only for Protestants) still in effect? If the answer is yes, is the current draconian Firearms Act unlawful and therefore null and void?

I for one would endorse returning to a pre 1920 legal position. However, many people have been led to believe that they are children and cannot trust themselves with guns. The police are in no position to lecture or decide who should be able to own a gun, being highly incompetent in their use.

Briam Butler wrote: Next time we have a nutter loose with a gun lets hope you are the first person he meets.
I agree. I would much rather have that person meet me first, as I am well-trained, constantly aware of my surroundings, and ALWAYS armed. I have no doubts of my ability to stop your hypothetical "nutter" cold in his tracks - before any innocents get hurt.
Sheep may fear the sheepdog, but so does the wolf. The difference is that sheep are perfectly safe in the presence of the most fierce sheepdog.

I would like to add a small point here. If we legalised all drugs, supplying them through controlled conetres, giving them away free with advice and help if required, we wouldn't need guns to protect ourselves as crime would almost disappear overnight. The figures escape me immediately but the need for cash to fuel a habit is the cause of most if not all robberies of the person and property.
We can never win the stupidly named "war on drugs" so lets give the people who want them what they want and let the rest of us walk the streets, leave our front doors open and live in peace.

There is an argument that if guns were re-legalised, (because well within living memory, many people owned revolvers quite legally for the protection of their homes and families), we might have more incidents like Dunblane. Possibly we might. But we have more children than that killed every month on the roads, and no-one seriously suggest that we should give up our cars (lethal instruments if misused), and be compelled to take to public transport. In matters of personal transport, we have chosen freedom and accepted there will be some damage. In matters of personal protection, we have abandoned freedom in the hope that it will lead to safety. It doesn’t. All it leads to is a situation where we are not allowed to protect ourselves, but the police cannot protect us effectively either. This is a completely appalling double-bind to live in. As one poster said, what if the tattooed hooligan next door has a gun? Well he might act a bit better if he knew I had one.

In my experience (which includes being first mate of a leaky schooner on a transatlantic passage, and a number of other crazy things, and no, I am not making this up!) people react pretty well to danger. What drags people down is year after year of the anxiety of knowing that if danger strikes, they will not be able to do anything about it. A gun-owning society might be a bit more dangerous, but it might also be a much happier one.

To re-iterate my central point; what most people want is impossible and contradictory; a society which is both perfectly free and perfectly safe. Freedom implies the freedom to do some things which are not safe. And a separate but related point; experience shows that in a great many cases, freedom is not only philosophically preferable, it works better. When people argue for prohibition of anything, they seem to think the State can wave some sort of magic wand, and prohibition can be achieved instantly and cleanly and with no costs. It can’t be. Prohibition always implies immense evils, not only the creation of business opportunities for criminals, but also the creation of a society in which no-one is allowed to mind their own business. The chief difference between Mr Hitchens and myself is that he is more selective about the areas where the arguments for liberty should apply.

As for cannabis; firstly cannabis isn’t a narcotic. Secondly, it has been in habitual use in the UK for centuries. Queen Victoria used it to ease her menstrual pains. There is a Celtic tradition that pipers used hemp to tie their reeds then smoked the leaves. There is a Cornish dialect word; “to have the muggles”. It means, basically, to be silly-tipsy-drunk. Now the old Cornish language was from the same root as Welsh, and the Welsh word “mygu” means to smoke. I don’t need to point out that both Cornish and Welsh developed their vocabularies long before tobacco was imported. I have a splendid old eight-volume set of the “Encyclopaedic Dictionary”, which my grandfather bought on Llanelly market in about 1910, which has a full page devoted to cannabis and its uses. There are many other such examples if you care to look for them. Prohibition of cannabis has its roots in a moral panic about it in the USA in the 1930s. Much of the propaganda worked up in this period was deeply racist.

I am not quite sure why Mr Dawne objects to my making comparisons between alcohol and cannabis “using figuress” (sic). Statistics are usually a more reliable guide to reality than anecdote or hysteria. But anyway, the figures show that about 50% of young people have used cannabis, and about 10% of the population have used it. About one third of users smoke daily, and about one-fifth smoke “regularly”, whatever that means. (source; the British Crime Survey, usually regarded as reliable) So if we were going to see a huge rise in cannabis-based crime or deaths, we would have seen it by now. We haven’t. The best those sections of the media who are anti-cannabis can come up with is very occasional isolated stories of someone who did something horrible “after using cannabis”. If you look closely at the facts, you often find that they had been using a wide variety of other drugs as well, usually including that good old stand-by, alcohol, which most certainly does have long and well-proven associations with violence. And they were often violent criminal types to begin with. Quite possibly, without the cannabis to slow them down, they would have been even worse, because one well-known effect of the stuff is to make its users rather passive.

I am not arguing that legalising cannabis would have no ill effects. It might cost the nation a good deal in lost productivity if its use became more widespread. I am arguing that in the real world, there are no perfect answers. We always have to choose between the various evils, and the evils of prohibition are almost certainly greater than those of decriminalisation, since prohibition puts supply and quality control in the hands of professional criminals, and assures them of a large and guaranteed income stream. And I am afraid that is all it achieves. It certainly does little or nothing to reduce use. Compared with the damage done to society by prohibition, the damage done by cannabis seems pretty trivial.

Finally, I am not “acting out of selfishness and guilt”, as Mr Dawne puts it. I deeply object to someone attributing motives to me which are not mine. This is extremely discourteous. In a face-to-face conversation, I would require an apology at this point. I am acting out of reason, something which seems to be singularly lacking in policy-making.

Can you really be surprised that you were asked to provide a username and password? They can't just let any old riff-raff onto these things you know. From time to time, those who (unlike me) aren't considered VIP status on the MoS site, will be inconvenienced in this way. Only when your contributions are considered to be top-class will you enjoy the sort of perks afforded to me.

I'd like to add my voice (if it isn't censored, as has been the case with some of my recent posts) to those agreeing with Peter Hitchens on the subject of gun control. I see this as a libertarian issue: increasingly, authority is attempting to infantilise the population of this country, taking away various rights because, like parents, they think that they know better.

The right to free speech - gone, thanks to various ridiculous "incitement" laws. The right to defend oneself - gone, thanks to draconian anti-gun laws. The right to trial by jury, and to liberty if one isn't charged with a crime - going or gone, thanks to insidious "anti-terror" laws.

The unelected powers-that-be in the European Commission want to be able to tell us what to say and not to say (particularly on matters related to mass immigration, Islamification and race), and to send in armed police stormtroopers, from whom unarmed people will not be able to defend themselves, to enforce this totaliarianism. That looks pretty close to tyranny to me.

Free adults must be allowed weapons or substances of their choice. Regulated, yes, but legal all the same. If they choose to commit criminal acts, they will be tried and judged as responsible adults. But the freedom to choose cannot be taken away. If it is, we are reduced to powerless, controlled children, which is where the much-used quote about sacrificing freedom for security and losing both is relevant.

Finally, regarding gun deaths, I would make the point that in Switzerland, every household must, by law, be armed. We can quibble over the precise figures, but there is no doubt that gun crime is very low in that country. Dare I say this may have something to do with the fact that Switzerland remains a largely stable, civilised and homogenous European nation, unlike many of the inner cities in Britain and America where much gun crime occurs?

It would be interesting to tease out of the American statistics the number of crimes/deaths that are done with legal firearms versus the ones done with illegal firearms. I remember a discussion that was done on the New Hampshire PBS channel a long time ago. They were talking crime and crime rates, and one panelist made the obvious point that they do not have a lot of burglaries there because the criminal is likely to be met by somebody with an 870 shotgun. As a result, the career criminals go to places like Washington DC that have an almost complete ban on firearms.

I'm afraid the same unilluminated debate over the "evils" of self defence: role of the State as divine arbiter in clearing up crime: enforcing law: the efficiency of due process, and appropriateness of sentencing are the stuff of myth, and repeated ad nauseum by those who would also claim, an individual MUST VOTE! One does not HAVE to vote (Thank Heaven) - indeed, one might argue, in certain circumstances, it would be morally reprehensible to so do! One cannot own a gun (except under licensed conditions) in UK, whereas no such restrictions on a persons right to defend life and limb, exists in USA. A woman may also carry less lethal means in her handbag, to self defend against assault, sexual or other (eg: mace, pepper spray), yet which is deemed illegal here. She can, however, carry a WHISTLE! Which, as a recent trial has highlighted, is as much use as a soggy newspaper, if you have been drugged with Rohypnol, and subsequently raped by a Blackcab Driver!
Havinv resided many years in a particularly affluent suburb of San Francisco, guns were a fixture and fitting in our household. There was nothing "abnormal" about this. Burgling was not unusual - INEVITABLY perpetrated by ARMED criminals. I was often "home alone", and frankly, would not hesitate to defend myself or my children. Why women are not permitted to carry mace - defeats me. Why a farmer in Cambs had to serve 2 years for defending himself and his property from (repeated) intruders - also defeats me! WE ARE NOT CHILDREN, NOR IDIOTS. In fact, laws exist in the USA, whereby one must prove self defence in the event of killing an intruder. Lest one be prosecuted for Homicide!

"This brings me back to the USA. Americans are not so infantilised as we are. For many reasons, mainly the fact that it is still possible to live genuinely rural lives in large parts of the country, Americans are less likely to rely on others to protect them or their homes from danger."

I think you are incorrect here. most Americans do not live rural lives, even though ther are large swaths of rural lands in America. No, most of us are urban and suburban dwellers, but we still do have a tradition of self-reliance.

"The USA - a society, for the most part, of volunteers and pioneers, has never had a comparable experience. Let us hope it never does."

Much closer to the mark, I think. While one can see infantaliaing tends in the U.S. as well, many people actively resist them, and I hope that will never change.

One thing that I have observed with absolute disbelief from here in the U.S. has been the criminalization of self-defense in the U.K. Effective self-defense is the most important sub-text to the gun debate in the U.S. If one looks at gun ownership data, most people who own guns are not hunters, and never will be hunters. They own guns for personal and family defense. In fact, while gun ownership amongst Democrats is lower than amongst Republicans, a larger percentage of Democrat gun owners cite personal protection as the reason to own a gun than do Republican gun owners. Guns are the most effective means to defense, but are controversial in society. The idea of resisting against a criminal attacking you is NOT controversial.

Most Americans, liberal or conservative, would agree that a dead, injured, or beaten criminal, who received their injuries in commission of a crime, simply got what they deserved.

A very well constructed and argued piece. I totally agree about gun ownership. Handguns should be allowed as should concealed carriage od same with an appropriate training and permit. The law must be changed to allow for defense of the person and home with deadly force. With a very severe punishment for the criminal engaged in attacking a person or their home if not shot dead by the attackee.

If I had not legally been allowed to carry a powerful handgun in South Africa especially after the new ANC government came to power in 1994 (we left in 1999 and the violent, horrendous crime rates have STILL not improved) I would be dead now, and several others also, at different times, whom I rushed to protect in public places from armed criminals. If I had to live in the UK again, I would rather be alive in jail for carrying a self-defence weapon than just another death statistic, and the criminal Barras has not robbed anyone else since visiting Martin's farm, has he? Here in Spain, the police carry guns, as they should to help prevent crime.

Brian Butler said: "The English have the lowest gun deaths per head of any country in Europe, we will keep it that way thanks" Here in the US, firearms owners, mostly by the simple display of a legal weapon, prevent some 1.6 to 2 million crimes annually. " We will keep it that way, thanks." What's your prevention statistic mate?

Mr Hitchens wrote:
"...This is my country, where my ancestors are buried and where I hope and intend to be buried myself, where I grew up, whose landscape, climate, music, poetry and architecture are in my bones, whose battle-honours are my battle-honours and whose history is my history. Nowhere else is like it..."

I feel the same way, sir. Perhaps this is what is lacking in our "modern" society.
How many of those under 30 (40?) know of, or care about, these things?

Often, the greatest pleasure of travelling used to be the sense of coming home - stepping off the aeroplane onto rain-soaked Tarmac at Ringway and feeling this was my island, my rock... A place where I belonged and had a stake in.

I agree with you about guns. I own them but don't feel all that comfortable around them. We got a gun about 10 years ago when there were several break-ins in my neighborhood and a rapist who attacked little old ladies. My husband at that time traveled for business a lot and I was home alone. As a woman home alone I was quite scared at that time. In the U.S. while they keep trying to take guns away the police also cannot be sued or prosecuted for not arriving in a timely fashion. So there is no choice but to rely upon oneself. I took classes and thought long and hard about my decision to get a gun. The instructor at the class told us that we had to make a decision to kill if we decided to defend ourself and it would be messy and very bad. Also that if you don't shoot to kill then the person breaking into your house would probably overwhelm your defenses and take your weapon away

I find it extremely interesting that the increase in violent crime in Great Britain corresponds with the increasingly draconian gun laws.

Here's more Kates and Mauser:

"On the one hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun
ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions
in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the
same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and
dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response
was ever‐more drastic gun control including, eventually, banning
and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns.22
Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by
2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the
developed world’s most violence‐ridden nations."

From the article
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?
A review of international and
some domestic evidence
Don B. Kates* and Gary Mauser**

To: Pete Brant | 01 May 2009 at 12:14 PM
You asked the question “Tell me how allowing a similar gun culture to the US would improve things here”. I think you will find that no one here wants the gun culture of the US, just the right to bear arms. As explained by Mr Hitchens on many occaisions

Do not get me wrong, I think the final sentence placed upon Mr Martin was just, as he did do wrong. If Fred Barras did not break the law in the first place then he would not be dead.

To: John Davies | 01 May 2009 at 10:40 AM
Again you have made the same false comparisons with with alcohol and cannabis using figuress
You write: “There is no such thing as a harmless drug. But in my experience, it is far less harmful than alcohol. I have tried both. Alcohol kills about 22,000 people every year. It does immense amounts of indirect damage in accidents, sometimes fatal, in violent incidents, it floods NHS casualty units every weekend, it makes our city centres uninhabitable at night, it is implicated in a shocking amount of domestic abuse”

Again as I pointed out to another contributor in a previous post these figures do not prove that it is ok to legalise cannabis. Misleading statistics indeed, you could say that the above figures show that criminalisation is keeping the number of deaths down compared to alcohol and tobacco. If we were to legalise narcotics, what do you think will happen to the number of deaths attributed to these drugs? It will almost certainly rise if you make it available to the masses, especially given they are much more hazardous to health. This was one of my points I made from the outset of this debate which nobody as yet has addressed.

I don’t think the political/media class and indeed some of the liberal middle class don’t fully comprehend the damage that will result from their “It did/does me no harm” attitude. They are acting out of selfishness and guilt as many still do continue their habit after university and youth.

It is one thing to ban a substance that has been in customary use for centuries by a large part of the population, and quite another to enforce a ban on dangerous substances that are still not in customary use, in an attempt to ensure they never become customary. This simple logic seems to be lost on many of the supporters of legalisation.

I would like everyone to know here that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was to keep the government honest. It is a deterrent from tyranny. We have our rights passed to us here from the English People and their problems with tyranny, Magna Carta, Bill of Petition and the English Bill of Rights. Blackstone stated that the the people were in a much better state due to their being armed. The Common Law provides that everyone is able to defend themselves and the right to resist tyranny is likewise an inherent right of a free born person.

How we have come so far?? It is true that some lack the backbone to say no to crimminal acts wheather they be disguised in the form of legislation. Siple rules that all may be aware of, Common Law, has been replaced by legislative acts that Blackstone called the Roman Civil law or Commercial Law. As the Tablets of Rome and the Common Law have so our Constitutional system of laws have been interpreted away. In fact the rules of Common Law have not been in print sinec the forties here in the states. It has been spirited away by the lawyers and the politicians. Some folks just have to be in charge.

I have to say that some in the political light are just as culpalble as the thief waiting in the shadows. Though I cannot say that all intentions are bad I must say that if you in the least way infringe upon another by any means than debate and reason and use political ends and even force to exert your beliefs upon another then you deserve no better than the thief or murderer that waits to have his way. All of them are detestible but I think perhaps to use force of numbers or plain force by troops or police then you are just as culpable and the result the same. Don't we say, "A rose by any other name...". We have a term in law that is called "assumption of risk". The lawyers and judges use it and a reasonable man is supposed to use it. But they will not use it when it comes to self defense. Why is that, do you suppose? I am afraid that the law is what they say it is. Like the terms liberal and conservative have been changed in meaning to confuse and complicate the rationale speach of politicians. I am afraid that 1984 is alive and well, we just are not aware enough to see it fully.

Would I use deadly force on another, yes. I have had the situation presented several times but a cooler head prevailed and it was best. I have been a victim of armed robbery and had a gun stuck under my chin and one threatened. Except for the robbery I was in complete control. All were within arms reach. You see I am trained in many forms of self defense. I can use bare hands, knives. clubs or sticks, staves and even swords. But the right I hold so sacred is the right not to cause harm to another. However, it does not mean that I would not. Some folks are not of the proper character to defend themselves or another. So it is that they enjoy the liberties that we who are able and of proper character provide. So read this and understand. I do not put your timid and retreating character on any stage for judgement, so like wise don't abuse my character. For one day your life may be saved or your liberty by someone such as myself. It seems that the government wants us to be the killer type armed and ready for war when it is to their interest but as soon as it is over then we had best pack up and be a docile subject/citizen. i wonder would they feel the same if their armed guards and security were taken away? Wwould they feel so brazen to demand I give up my fundamental liberties. Cowards all and pitiful, I say.

Thank you for the time and the opportunity to have my say, God Bless Us All

D. Geographic Patterns within Nations
Once again, if more guns equal more death and fewer guns
equal less death, areas within nations with higher gun ownership
should in general have more murders than those with
less gun ownership in a similar area. But, in fact, the reverse
pattern prevails in Canada,128 “England, America, and Switzerland,
[where the areas] with the highest rates of gun ownership
were in fact those with the lowest rates of violence.”129

A recent study of all counties in the United States has again
demonstrated the lack of relationship between the prevalence
of firearms and homicide.130
This inverse correlation is one of several that seems to
contradict more guns equal more death. For decades the
gun lobby has emphasized that, in general, the American
jurisdictions where guns are most restricted have consistently
had the highest violent crime rates, and those with
the fewest restrictions have the lowest violent crime rates.131
For instance, robbery is highest in jurisdictions which are
most restrictive of gun ownership.132As to one specific control,
the ban on carrying concealed weapons for protection,
“violent‐crime rates were highest in states [that flatly ban
carrying concealed weapons], next highest in those that allowed
local authorities discretion [to deny] permits, and
lowest in states with nondiscretionary” concealed weapons
laws under which police are legally required to license
every qualified applicant.133 Also of interest are the extensive
opinion surveys of incarcerated felons, both juvenile
and adult, in which large percentages of the felons replied
that they often feared potential victims might be armed and
aborted violent crimes because of that fear.134 The felons
most frightened about confronting an armed victim were
those “from states with the greatest relative number of privately
owned firearms.”

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